HOME |
RSS | 
Soviet cosmonauts usually returned to Earth by landing on the ground, often in vast stretches of wilderness. They had to be prepared to survive until pickup, and even went armed to ensure their safety.
Current Russian cosmonauts return the same way. To prepare themselves for the rigors of landfall during winter, they train at a facility in Kazakhstan. Their training includes starting fires and building shelters during brutal weather. View several more pictures at the link.
Link | Photo: Yuri Garagain Cosmonaut Training Center
MetaFilter member Dudley Storey poses a fascinating question:
So you wake up tomorrow morning to find almost everyone on Earth missing. The Internet will continue to work for a few hours: what information could you download to ensure your survival and rebuild civilization?
Mr. Storey has a few suggestions, which you can read at the link. How would you answer the question?
Link -via Super Punch | Image: Random House
Previously: A Monument of Post-Apocalyptic Instructions
Plucky Andrea the stray cat used up a couple of her nine lives, but would not succumb to the animal shelter’s attempts to euthanize her.
Officials at West Valley City’s animal shelter in Utah say the cat named Andrea hadn’t been adopted for 30 days when shelter officials tried to put her to death in October. She survived, so they gassed her again.
Shelter officials detected no vital signs and presumed she was dead after the second try, so they put her in a plastic bag in a cooler. But when they checked the bag, they saw she had vomited on herself and had hypothermia but was alive.
The shelter then decided to stop trying to kill her.
“It was just one of those things where they thought this cat obviously really wants to live,” West Valley City spokesman Aaron Crim told the Salt Lake Tribune (http://bit.ly/ylvSDw). “Let’s give it a chance to find a permanent home.”
Andrea has since been adopted, and is settling well into her new home. Link -Thanks, Skully!
(Image credit: Community Animal Welfare Society)
The Crovel, short for Crowbar Shovel, is the must have tool for survival in most any situation. It’s a spade, machete, saw, crowbar, hammer, and can also be used as a grappling hook, basically an amazing wonder-tool for extreme conditions. Guaranteed to make surviving the zombie apocalypse a whole lot easier.
The tsunami that hit Japan in March killed 20,000 people, so that nation is now thinking seriously about how to prepare for this type of disaster. A company called Cosmo Power has responded by developing a floating fiberglass pod that people can jump into in a hurry:
Company president Shoji Tanaka says the $3,900 (300,000 yen) capsule can hold four adults, and that it has survived many crash tests. It has a small lookout window and breathing holes on top.
It’s called the Noah, in reference to Noah’s ark. So far, the company has received 500 orders.
Link -via DVICE (where there’s a video) | Photo: Aashi
Are you prepared to shelter in place for a few weeks? Are you ready to get out of your area quickly with all of the equipment that you need? What disaster scenarios are you ready for?
Like the Boy Scouts say, be prepared. This man is and he will tell you how to be ready to face hard living in an urban environment.
Public Toilet Survival Kit – $4.95
Do scary public restrooms keep you from seeking adventure and fun? You need the Public Toilet Survival Kit from the NeatoShop. This fantastic little tin includes:
Now get out there and pee with abandon. A whole new world of restrooms awaits you.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop more hilarious Personal Care items.
Comments Off
A 20-foot juniper tree near Sunset Point, Arizona survived a wildfire last week that consumed everything around it. It’s not the first time, either. In fact, the tree is a famous survivor.
Every year it’s decorated for Christmas and Independence Day. Right now, it’s covered with several American flags and yellow ribbons. It also has its own water system set up underneath, with several large drums and a pipe to feed it water.
That’s where the tree gets its name — the mystery tree. A mystery person or people decorate it every year, but it’s also a mystery because it manages to have survived several wildfires over the years.
“It’s survived wildfire after wildfire” says ADOT engineer Greg Gentsch. “We’re just happy it’s still here.”
Have you ever had to cut open an animal and crawl inside in order to survive during a storm? You know — like how Han Solo cut open a tauntaun and shoved Luke Skywalker inside during a snowstorm on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back?
No? Well then, have I got a blog for you! Cutting Open an Animal and Crawling Inside to Survive a Storm in the Wild is a blog devoted entirely providing practical instructions on choosing the right animal, the right blade, and making the most of your gushy, gory survival experience. There are many animals to choose from, including the luckdragon — a creature from the book and movie The Neverending Story. Approach the luckdragon with the right bait:
Falkor in particular is trusting of human children. Thus, if you get lost taking a class of kindergarteners to search for Uyulala the Southern Oracle, and a storm that may or may not be the work of the evil sorceress Xayide is rolling in from the north, have one of them summon Falkor.
With luck, he will find you, and when he does, his luck will run out. Use a long serrated blade to saw him open from chin to tail. Work fast, this will be a traumatic moment for the kids. Consider distracting them by pretending that a rock in the distance is the werewolf Gmork coming to steal their souls.
After the incision is made, remove the guts and herd the children inside.
Link via Nerdcore | Image: Warner Bros.
We’ve all contemplated that nightmare scenario: you’re trapped in an IKEA store after closing, the cold of winter is seeping into your bones, and worst of all, a pack timber wolves is starting to circle around you. You need to start a fire now. But how? This video by Vimeo user Helmet tells you how to start a fire with nothing more than the products you can find in an IKEA store.
via reddit
TV survivalist Bear Grylls can live off the land, and just about anything that is even remotely edible. But can you recall exactly what he’s eaten on television? Today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss will test your recall -or did you block out those unpleasant memories? Believe it or not, I scored 90%, even though I haven’t watched any of his shows. I’m not psychic; I just have an idea of what would make good television. Link
The Donner Party…the Shackleton expedition…those soccer players in the Andes — We’ve all heard stories of people who have survived hardship under impossible odds, but brace yourself for the tale of Alexa von Tobel. She pushed herself to the limits to find out if she could go one entire day without spending any money in the untamed wilderness of New York City:
On Tuesday night I had just returned home after a long day of work and I decided to order in from my favorite restaurant. Forty minutes later, the deliveryman arrived with my pasta primavera and a Greek salad and I handed him $32.50, including tip. Pretty steep for a dinner for one, I thought. I returned to my kitchen counter, brown bag in hand, and it was then that I had a moment: I reviewed my spending for the day and I realized that I had spent well over $80 over the course of the day on menial expenses. I hadn’t gone shopping, I hadn’t dined out at Cafeteria for lunch, and I hadn’t joined my friends for drinks. It dawned on me that the taxicab rides, stops at CVS, the Starbucks lattes, the mid-morning or mid-afternoon snacks, my take-out from the fabulous Italian restaurant, and other trivial expenses really added up; realizing the total cost of it all was a painful but eye-opening experience.
That night, I decided to go on a mission to live a full 24-hour day without spending a penny.
Content warning from this point on. Sometimes the things that a person does to survive aren’t pretty.
Link via J-Walk Blog | Photo: Business Insider
Jason Bourne, a foreign service officer played by Matt Damon in several movies, is a wonderful character who uses really awesome tricks and tools to carry out missions. In this article, the Bourne movie series is dissected and numbered for your reading pleasure.
Bourne uses lockers provided by train and bus terminals to stash bags filled with money, weapons and identities he can use. This idea of creating caches was also detailed in Emergency.
Bourne fights using a type of martial arts that is a combination of Filpino Kali and Jeet Kune Do.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by squealingrat.
Admit it. You’ve all thought about a scenario where you have to jump out of a speeding car to survive. But how? The Art of Manliness has the inside guide:
… when I lived in Tijuana, two of my friends actually did have to jump from a speeding vehicle. True story.
After leaving my apartment one night, these two guys got on a calafia, or bus. Now calafias are pieces of crap. They’re essentially school buses from the 1970s painted different colors to correspond with their route. None of them would pass a vehicle inspection in the U.S. and a lot of the drivers are crackheads.
The area we lived in was super hilly. As the bus was descending one of these steep, long hills, my friends noticed that while the bus driver was repeatedly stepping on the brake pedal, the bus kept going faster and faster. The brakes had gone out on the bus.
My friends had two choices. Stay on the bus and see if they’d survive the impending crash or jump and take their chances with the pavement. They decided to jump. One my buds was a retired Mexican soldier and all around badass. While my American friend was screaming out the window for somebody to help, my Mexican friend took action. He went to the driver to see if there was an emergency brake. There was, but it didn’t work. So he went to the back of the bus and opened up the emergency door.
“Vamos a saltar.” We’re going to jump.
Here’s hoping that you’d never have to jump out of a moving vehicle: Link
Life in Haiti-Canon 5D MKII & Glidetrack from Leclerc Brothers Motion Pictures on Vimeo.
When I first saw this title, I put it off assuming it would just show the depressing story of Haiti. I’m happy to report that I was wrong, because this piece by the Leclerc Brothers is beautiful. Yes, the destruction is evident, but the film serves a deeper purpose… The human condition, at this moment in time.
Music by: George Fenton from Planet Earth, “Namibia – The Lions and the Oryx”
Comments Off 
Luke Skywalker survived the arctic conditions of the planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back only because Han Solo killed his tauntaun (a native beast of burden) and shoved Luke inside the animal’s warm carcass. This led the blog Wolf Gnards to ask, as a practical question, how long could Luke really survive in a tauntaun’s body?
In a normal environment, a carcass gets cold in 8 to 36 hours losing an average rate of 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit per hour. However, the ice world of Hoth is not an average environment. The Star Wars database lists that Hoth reaches nightly temperatures of -60 F. In a frigid, sub-zero environment, body heat can be lost almost 32 times faster. This means a Tauntaun’s body heat could drop almost 51.2 F every hour. Considering that Han Solo’s Tauntaun died of severe hypothermia even before it was cut open with Luke’s light saber, one could assume it’s core body temperature was already well below normal. The problem for Luke is if the Tauntaun’s body temperature reaches freezing point those once toasty guts, blood, and assorted alien goo, will in fact become a frozen coffin. If the Tauntaun died of cardiac arrest due to hypothermia with an average body temperature of 75 F (23 C), and if Tauntaun blood freezes at 28.4 F (-2 C), then Han has roughly 56 minutes to set up a shelter before Luke once again is in danger of losing his life in the barren wasteland of Hoth.
It’s an interesting hypothesis, but it should be followed with rigorous scientific testing. Any volunteers?
Link via Forces of Geek | Image: Lucasfilm
Jack Weir was clearing trees in his family farm with a Bobcat when a large cottonwood hit back and impaled him with a piece of wood 20 feet long and 6 inches thick.
What happened next was nothing short of a miracle:
A broken limb came flying in under the roll bar, spearing Jack through the belly with a piece of wood 20 feet long and six inches thick.
“I’ve always had a pretty high tolerance for pain. I had no pain, I had none,” Wier said.
Still, he knew the situation was desperate. That’s when Jack remembered the military mantra he relied on during his 38 years in the army.
“You define the problem…you identify alternatives… you accumulate relevant information… and then you make a decision. My problem was I got this tree in me,” explained the tree accident victim.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by jmillitzer.
Is there an evolutionary reason for women to undergo menopause? One theory says that it happens so they can survive long enough to be grandmothers. This is not a reward; it is another method of helping one’s genes to survive and flourish.
The grandmother hypothesis suggests that humans have “given up” their reproductive potential in later years in order to invest in the children they already have as well as their grandchildren. Naturally, this is an unconscious, biological adaptation that emerges over many generations and is not the result of individual decision-making. For such a hypothesis to be confirmed it would have to be demonstrated that children are significantly more likely to survive when a grandmother is present than when she isn’t.
Dr. Lummaa has done just that in her study published in the journal Nature, demonstrating that children are 12% more likely to survive to adulthood when they have a grandmother’s support than when they don’t.
Let’s hear it for grandmas! Link
Cynthia Blair-Hoover of Granby, Colorado crashed on the way to Denver when her car went off a cliff near Central City. Although the fall left the 52-year-old woman with eleven broken ribs, broken vertebrae, and a punctured lung, she began inching her way towards an old mine by sliding on her back.
For five and a half days and nights, Hoover sucked moisture off her hair and did her best to stay warm through rain, hail and even snow at the 8,000 foot mark in the mountains. By the following Tuesday, she was able to hear voices coming from the mine, where they were conducting tours. When the voices stopped, she would yell for help and after several minutes, one of the men heard her cries for help.
“I couldn’t believe she was able to survive,” said Fire Chief, Gary Allen. “We have mountain lions, bears and other critters up here. It is a miracle she wasn’t mauled to death.”
Hoover was airlifted to a hospital in Denver, where she is currently recovering in the intensive care unit. Link -via Arbroath
Xavier Rosset, a young Swiss adventurer, recently returned to Europe after spending 300 days on an isolated island, armed with only a few knives and a baby pig for companionship. He voluntarily chose the volcanic isle of Tofua, which has nothing except "some pigs, lots of coconuts, a lake and tropical forest."
Rosset’s goal was to ‘relearn’ the natural survival skills which many urban males seem to have forgotten.
“At the beginning I had to try hard to survive,” the former professional snowboarder said.
“I had to find the food and water, build shelter, learn how to fish, everything.”
Last September, just 10 days in, he had a realisation that he was all alone and would be for many months to come.
“That was very hard, without my family, my girlfriend, my friends. There was a lot of loneliness.”
But he was kept busy just trying to survive.
Link – via uniquedaily
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.
Earthquake-prone Japan has a market for these suits that you strap onto your cats and dogs so that they can survive for days after a major earthquake. Each suit contains all of the necessary gear including water, biscuits, aromatherapy oils, and rubber foot pads, all contained in the pockets of a flame-resistant coat.
Link (in Japanese) via Rinkya via Popped Culture
The following is reprinted
from Uncle
John's Unsinkable Bathroom Reader
Sinking of the Titanic - LIFE
Images
We all know the story of the Titanic - but did you know that
one man survived the disaster only to be condemned for not dying an honorable
death? Here's the story of a lone Japanese onboard of the ill-fated ocean
liner whose survival actually became a curse:
THE LONG TRIP HOME
RMS Titanic - photo via abratis.de
In 1910 Japan's Transportation Ministry sent an official named Masabumi
Hosono to Russia to study that country's railroad system. Hosono finished
his assignment in early 1912 and, following a brief stop in London, began
the next leg of his trip home by embarking across the Atlantic on the
RMS Titanic. Needless to say, that leg of the trip didn't
go quite as planned.
On April 14, at 11:40 p.m., just four days into its maiden voyage, the
Titanic struck an iceberg while traveling near top speed and
began taking on water.
(Photo: Cheddarbay.com)
RUDE AWAKENING
It's doubtful that anyone on the Titanic, which had been advertised
by the White Star Liner as being "practically unsinkable," realized
at first that the ship had suffered a mortal blow. There were plenty of
people on board who didn't even know the ship had hit anything. Many of
those who noticed felt only a slight shudder followed by the sound of
the engines coming to a stop.
 Hosono
apparently slept through the entire thing. The first he learned of it
was shortly after midnight, 25 or 30 minutes after the collision, when
he was awakened by a knock at the door of his second-class cabin and told
to put on his life vest.
Three times when he tried to make his way to the lifeboats, he was turned
away by the ship's officers, who ordered him to return to the lower levels
of the ship. They likely assumed that, as a Japanese person, he must have
been traveling in third class, or "steerage." On his third attempt,
Hosono managed to slip past a guard and make his way to the lifeboats.
IN THE DARK
Was the Titanic sinking, or was it just floating dead on the
water, waiting to be assisted by the ocean liner Carpathia or
one of the half a dozen other ships who'd received her distress calls
and were already steaming to her aid?
We know the answer today, of course, but on that fateful night only three
men on the Titanic did - Edward J. Smith, the captain; Thomas
Andrews, the chief designer; and J. Bruce Ismay, the president of the
White Star Line.
They knew not only that the Titanic would sink, but also that
it would sink well before help arrived. And they kept the information
to themselves, fearing a panic that would cause the passengers to stampede
the lifeboats, which when filled to capacity could carry only 1,178 of
the more than 2,200 people on board.
Even the officers ordered to organize the loading of the lifeboats had
no idea that the Titanic was going down.
THANKS ... BUT NO THANKS
Withholding this information did help to keep the loading of the lifeboats
orderly, but probably at the cost of hundreds of needless deaths. Many
passengers and even many crew members, not suspecting the gravity of the
situation, preferred to remain on board rather than risk climbing into
the lifeboats. If you had booked passengers on a ship that was said to
be unsinkable, would you be willing to leave its warm, dry, and seemingly
safe environs to climb into a tiny, swinging lifeboat in the middle of
the night, and be lowered on pulleys 65 feet straight down into the freezing,
iceberg-filled Atlantic? Even the captain's order to load women and children
first must have cost some passengers their lives, because it meant that
married women were being asked to separate from their husbands, which
many refused to do.
Besides, what was the rush? As far as the crew members loading the boats
knew, the Titanic wasn't sinking. The lifeboats were simply going
to ferry passengers to the rescue ships when they arrived, and that was
still hours away. There would be plenty of time to load more people into
the lifeboats later, if they didn't want to go now. The crew members filled
the boats with as many people as wanted to get in, and then lowered them
into the water. In the end, only three of Titanic's 20 lifeboats
were filled to capacity when they set down in the Atlantic.
Hosono must have sensed what was happening earlier than many of the passengers
did, because as he stood next to Lifeboat No. 10 as it was being loaded,
he was already steeling himself for the end. "I tried to prepare
myself for the last moment with no agitation, making up my mind not to
leave anything disgraceful as a Japanese," he explained in a letter
to his wife. "But still I found myself looking for and waiting for
any possible chance to survive."
That chance came moments later, when the officer loading No. 10 could
not coax any more women or children into the boat. "Room for two
more!" the officer called out. Hosono watched as another man jumped
into the boat.
"I myself was deep in desolate thought that I would no more be able
to see my beloved wife and children, since there was no alternative for
me than to share the same destiny as the Titanic," he wrote.
"But the example of the first man making a jump led me to take this
last chance." Hosono hopped in, and at 1:20 a.m. he and 34 other
people were lowered to safety in a boat built to hold 65.
One of the lifeboats carrying Titanic survivors (Photo: The
National Archives)
FINAL MOMENTS
The Titanic, by now sitting very low in the water, had just
one hour left to live. Eight of the 20 lifeboats had already launched
and only one of them - Hosono's No. 10 - was filled even halfway
to capacity. (Lifeboat No. 1 launched with only 12 passengers out of a
possible 40). Many of the passengers still aboard the Titanic
were just beginning to realize that the "unsinkable" ship might
really be sinking.
When the Titanic finally slipped beneath the waves at 2:20 a.m.,
Hosono watched from Lifeboat No. 10. He described the experience in a
letter to his wife, which he wrote on board the Carpathia as
it brought the survivors to New York. "What had been a tangible,
graceful sight was not reduced to a mere void. And how I thought about
the inevitable vicissitudes of life!"
AFTERMATH
Of the more than 2,200 passengers and crew aboard the Titanic,
just over 700 survived, including 316 of the 425 women and 56 of 109 children.
Even if every woman and child had been accommodated in the lifeboats,
there still would have been enough room for nearly 700 of the 1,690 men,
yet only 338 men survived. Not everyone who perished did so because they
declined an opportunity to climb into a lifeboat, not by a long shot.
But this must surely have been the cause of many deaths.
In the shock and horror that followed one of the worst peace-time disasters
in maritime history, many of these subtle details were lost on newspaper-reading
public. As they counted up the 162 dead women and children, many readers
wondered how 338 men had managed to find their way into the lifeboats,
"displacing" those helpless victims. Hosono received some of
the harshest criticism of all. Not from the American newspapers, who expected
chivalrous self-sacrifice from well-bred gentlemen of the middle and upper
classes, but were dismissive of foreigners and the rabble traveling in
the steerage. Few American papers even took an interest in Hosono's story.
One that did celebrated the good fortune of the "lucky Japanese boy."
SAVED ... AND CONDEMNED
No, the harshest attack against Hosono came from his own countrymen.
For in surviving the Titanic disaster, he had broken two cultural
taboos. Not only had Hosono chosen ignominious life over an honorable
death, he had done so in public - on a European passenger liner
with the eyes of the world upon him.
Hosono was denounced as a coward by Japanese newspapers and fired from
his job with the Transportation Ministry. The ministry hired him back
a few weeks later, but his career never recovered. College professors
denounced him as immoral, and he was written up in Japanese textbooks
as a man who had disgraced his country. There were even public calls for
him to commit hara-kiri - ritual suicide - as means of saving
face.
Hosono never did kill himself, but there must have been times when he
wished he'd died on the Titanic. He never spoke of the experience
again, and forbade any mention of it in his home. After he died in 1939,
a broken and forgotten man, his letter to his wife, written on what is
believed to be the only surviving piece of Titanic stationery,
sat in a drawer until 1997, when the blockbuster film Titanic
staged its Tokyo premiere. Then the Japanese public's interest in the
doomed liner's lone Japanese passenger was renewed again, this time with
much more sympathy. |
|
 |
The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle
John's Unsinkable Bathroom Reader.
The Bathroom Readers' Institute has sailed the seas of science, history,
pop culture, humor, and more to bring you Uncle John's Unsinkable Bathroom
Reader. Our all-new 21st edition is overflowing with over 500 pages of
material that is sure to keep you fully absorbed.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute has published a series of popular
books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure
yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom
Reader Institute.
 |
Tonka the tortoise was found in San Mateo County in California after it had been attacked by a dog that had bitten off one of her legs. Rescuers were afraid she would never be able to move normally until one of them had the idea to attach wheels from a Tonka truck to her. Now she really gets around!
Local resident John O’Dea, 35, has now adopted Tonka and said she loved nothing better than roaming in the vegetable patch and going for ‘walks’.
Surfer John said: ‘She is doing really well and loves roaming around the vegetable garden on her shiny new wheels.
‘She has a particular fondness for tomatoes.
‘I take her for ‘walks’ regularly around my neighbourhood, I think she likes the speed but I do get a few funny looks.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by ccmushroom.
While Bear Grylls may have all the charm and reckless abandon that we all love, everyone knows he doesn’t really do half the surviving he claims to on his show.
Ray Mears however has spent his life learning from the worlds Indigenous tribes, picking up skills and dedicating all his time to survival, so he knows a thing or two.
Here he demonstrates how to build a snow cave, which if necessary you could shelter in for weeks at a time until the weather cleared up enough to get to safety. Not many of us are likely to see that much snow any time soon, but its a great bit of knowledge to have.
Link [YouTube]
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Jake.
